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Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Beer Descriptions

I like drinking beer. A lot. I also like making beer. A lot. And I like being involved in a brewery. A lot. That's all good, seeing as it is a major element of my life and has been for more than a decade.

Also, I like talking about beer when I drink it. It's enjoyable to be around a table, look over a great draft list and pick something. After it arrives, I like looking at it, smelling it, tasting it, thinking about it and usually discussing it with whoever is at the table. If I'm doing that with a group of people, it tends to be something that happens at the beginning of each round, but it is also just a few moments out of a meal or b.s. session. If you think about it, that discussion is a couple of minutes, maybe sharing some tastes and then, moving back to whatever earth-shattering, life-changing discussion was going on at the table already - like, did you see the last 30 Rock, or where are we riding bikes this weekend, or what time is your dentist appointment tomorrow, or did you see those meteor videos set to the Harlem Shake music, or whatever.

It's a completely different thing, however, when tasting beer is the sole focus of a conversation. When describing the beer can't just include a few descriptors and then going back to wondering whatever happened to the Chocolate Rain guy. It somehow complicates the process when it becomes an essay, rather than a caption. It can become pretentious or silly or overblown, because tasting a single beer is not a 30 minute discussion.

So why, you are now asking, did this become a subject for such rambling discussion and does it have the potential to become as long and silly as trying to describe a single beer for 30 minutes? Okay, I'll tell you why. Last week one of my jobs at the brewery was to write the descriptions of the beers. The definitive, pass it out to several hundred people, print it on the interweb for all of mankind to consider, description of our beers.

When that is the job, it takes time and thought and commitment and insight. It also takes some contemplation of all of the other descriptions of similar beers or how your beer fits into the categories of other beers. And, you can't end up with anything too serious, or too silly, or too much marketing speak, or too a lot of other stuff. Frankly, it's daunting. And this is coming from a guy who will write several hundred words about almost anything.

So, the point is, we have beer descriptions. I sat down one evening last week with several ounces of each of these beers and wrote descriptions of them. I will be debuting a new description each day with it's own post and they will be accumulated under their own tab, "Beers," appearing near the top of this page. Take a look, have a drink and let me know if you have a different way of describing these beers. If your description is better than mine, I will change our official description and gladly buy you a beer or two for your efforts. So, facebook us or leave it in the comment section or send me an e-mail to gage at inland nw brewing dot com.